Hitting the “Reset” Button on Your Life and Creating Change (feat. Matt Brannagan)

Hi, I'm Susan Drum. And welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. I'm excited to introduce my guest, Matt Brannigan. Matt's the director of faculty at Hoffman Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transformative adult education, special spiritual growth and leadership. He oversees 44 teachers and coaches who deliver the Hoffman process as well as ongoing coaching programs for clients. Matt retired from a 21 year military career where he served in leadership roles on active duty and in the National Guard, including being awarded a bronze star for his service during Operation Iraqi Freedom. So welcome, Matt, welcome.

Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to be here with you today.

Well, I'm excited to talk with you about the Hoffman Institute and the Hoffman process. I have seen many leaders go through that process and it's really been quite impactful. So much so they talk about it years and years later and how much they got from that experience. So can you share with our listeners who may have not heard of the Hoffman Institute or what the institute is about and a bit about the programs there?

Yeah, thank you. I love to hear that the leaders, you know, continue to talk about it years later. It's what we really love about the Hoffman process. And so where the Hoffman Institute, and it's been around for 54, almost 55 years now. And in that time it's had many different journeys along the way of how the process is conducted. But our primary offering right now is a seven day residential retreat that we conduct primarily in Northern California. We also rent a place in Connecticut that we do the process at times and we bring in people from all different walks of life. Leaders often gravitate towards us, but we have a kind of full spectrum of folks that tend to do the process. People that are really interested in creating change within their life, that is change in their career, in their workplace, change within their family, simply looking to better themselves and create a greater vision for their life. And in that, we work with a faculty to support them in a really empathic and compassionate way to both uncovering what's getting in the way for them, the things that are creating barriers or resistance to the change they want to make, as well as then helping them connect to the best parts of themselves so that they can authentically move toward their vision for their life. And it's a really rich experience, I think the way it's conducted across the seven days in that retreat setting and with low student to teacher Ratio, we have one teacher for about every eight students. So we often we're team teaching. It really gives us an opportunity to go into great depth with folks on what it is that they're wanting to explore and uncover. And so it's really rich, rewarding work.

Yeah. I think in particular when people are in transition, I've found it to be for leaders really helpful to take those seven days, take a step back and really think about what is the next phase of your life going to look like. So whether that's a divorce or a death of a family member or maybe a major career change that you, you're either contemplating or have just made, what I know from people who have done it is said it was the best experience that they could give themselves. A gift they give themselves. At that time, I'm wondering what makes it so powerful.

Well, we spoke and you acknowledged that you've done retreat before, but I think a lot of people, and probably some of the people watching or listening to this, haven't experienced retreat in a really impactful way. That is one of the elements that I think makes it great to actually remove and unplug from one's life in order to work solely on themselves. I mean, you mentioned, as you were speaking there, that some recognize it as a gift for themselves. It absolutely is. And I think it's becoming more and more so in the busy world we live in. And particularly for leaders who are often so occupied with all the many tasks, the many things they have to do just to maintain their leadership and career. But then we're talking about people who have families or dating lives or have other personal goals. And we often become so occupied with the doing that we don't get to focus on our being and the state that we want to be in the world. And the process is really good at helping people see that. And then there's this component of going back to the origin of what we call patterns. Patterns being the kind of compulsive, automatic, reactive beliefs, behaviors, ways of being that really hold us back from being our best authentic self. And so we work to kind of unpack those, what those patterns are, where they come from, bringing some self compassion back towards ourselves in dealing with them. A lot of folks, leaders in particular, are really accustomed to having some awareness of what's not working. And then they use their own self judgment or self criticism to kind of propel them past it. It's a, it's willpower more than actually working on healing what ails us. And this process, I think, does a really Wonderful job of connecting people back to it with a compassionate lens so that we can heal and benefit from the healing rather than just the power or, you know, force of will that allows us to get beyond certain patterns that eventually they, they show up again. They drag us back a bit.

Yes. I think one of the biggest insights that I've had recently is this concept of running from versus running towards. And I don't think we recognize how much we're running from something. And maybe it's running from being like my dad or being like my mom or I'll never do XYZ or I can't fail. So I'm literally running from failing. And the distinction of running towards is getting really committed to something that is an exciting new mission for yourself and stepping and moving towards that. I don't know if you have that as part of your philosophy, but my hunch says that you might as well.

Yeah, well, we look at it in several ways. One is we have people work on in the very first day and throughout the week crafting their vision, kind of the North Star, what they want to move toward in their life. And it has elements that are both focused and broad. And you know, sometimes I think visioning exercises done in certain other experiences I've had or can be pretty narrowed. Right. It can look at, it can be kind of step by step and milestone and it's almost goal setting within the visioning. We like to take a step back from that and have people vision in a way where they blow the lid off. Right. They actually look at what their deepest heart's desire is in their life in the different important areas. And so that's one way that we orient people from the beginning on what they're moving toward and in that moving also toward change in their life. Which people don't come to the Hoffman Institute and our Hoffman process if they're not interested in change, but also with an eye toward what they want to create for themselves. Because a lot of people could show up on the first day and they know what they don't want to be, they know what they don't want to be doing. But until they frame it in a way that they also are seeing what they are moving towards, they don't create the change that they really want to create. It's not optimal change. It's limited by always looking over your shoulder at what you're trying to move beyond. And it even shows up in the ways that we use language to set a goal. So somebody might come to the Hoffman process and say, I want to be less anxious. And we would welcome that as a response and wish that for them as well. But we know that there comes more power in saying okay, and if less anxious, what would you have more availability for? You know what, what arises in the space that was previously filled by that anxiety and how does that enrich your life and how do you get rewarded by that? And I think that kind of two directional approach, you know, both acknowledging, yes, what we want to move away from the patterns, the beliefs, the behaviors that are holding us back, but also what do we want to really generate in our life. That's where the real thrust and power often is.

Yes. Do you think that you can move towards what you want without dealing with the past, or do you think that you have to sort of deal with that first?

I think you can. I mean, and I know many people do. I mean, there's so much that we can get through that kind of willpower to move beyond. What I believe is that when we've healed those places that we've held onto from childhood that are where we've experienced hurt, pain, abandonment, withdrawal, disconnection, you know, those are big ones. But even in subtle ways, even in good, well meaning homes, we have parents who reinforce behaviors that don't always serve us when we become a resourced adult. So if we're able to work on and heal those, I think it creates a more easeful movement towards that greater vision. If I'm just continuing to chip away at those things that are holding me back, it feels effortful and I wish there was a way to quantify that. We joke like we wish we had an app that could show people how much more easeful their life becomes after the process. We really, you know, anecdotally, we know it to be extraordinarily true for people that, you know, once they've released some baggage, the movement up the mountain, you know, comes with, with lesser strain on the back.

Yeah, a lot easier. Well, well, how about sharing a few examples for us of leaders who have, through the process, if there's any background on like what they were challenged by, obviously no names and then what was available for them and how they are today in their leadership?

Yeah, well, you might know. So we're, we do get a lot of leaders. And again, we're not just a leadership retreat and seminar, but it is something that people gravitate to as leaders and we're really connected with YPO Young Presidents Organization. So we get, you know, dozens of folks from YPO each year and we do a lot of additional work with them. So we, we stay connected with them, we offer addition some additional workshops, we'll meet with their forum groups, things like that. So that's one area where we've invested a lot of energy and there's some reciprocity in connecting with leaders in that environment. And, you know, I've experienced people that, you know, somebody comes to mind specifically who, you know, YPO has been an executive in an organization that they founded 20 years, you know, at the top of it, and exploring that transition, what it actually looks like to move on to the next venture or move out of that role, particularly as a founder. And I'm sure, you know, in your many discussions, you realize how particularly that challenges challenge or how particularly challenging that is for founders who have created the. The vision, nurtured it from infancy, made it into something special, and the dynamics that go on in a transition like that. What we will look at with anyone, no matter the circumstances they're bringing to the process, is what's happening for them internally. There's a lot of ways to look externally to say, okay, how do I aid myself in creating a good transition? And what are the contingencies, what's the session plan? All of those kind of practical matters that are so often important and yet don't get to the heart of what's happening for leaders. We want to work on the inner work for them. What would it mean to have our patterns influence less of the decision and our authenticity and our spirit take the lead in making these important decisions? I've supported people in creating a way to be clear on what the legacy they want to leave when they move on from their company is, which is an important part. Sure. You recognize that for many leaders, like, what is the legacy? When I've moved on from this thing that is so important to me, that's one of my favorite areas to work in. And sometimes what we discover is that they're not actually ready to transition. It was their patterns that were leading them to think they needed to move away from something, coming back to what we were saying. And so then we can capture what is it that you actually want to move towards. And I think that really helps people, leaders in particular, be able to know what the next step on the path is for them.

Yes.

The other thing that I think so often becomes the case is that there's just challenges in the interpersonal dynamics in any workplace and particularly as we raise the stakes, people that are operating at a high level in their leadership and the financial commitments and the commitments to the number of employees. It just tends to. To bring with it a certain level of burden that we can anticipate and expect and know. And yet there's so much volatility within the dynamics, depending on the organization and the people involved, that finding ways to help people reconcile that part that is happening for them personally. The parts within them that get upset when there's chaos in the workplace, when there's challenging conversations, when we're being confronted with. With some level of difficulty and recognizing what patterns come up for them and working through those so that they can actually bring their best self into whatever challenging situation there is. And doesn't always guarantee that that leads to a successful conversation. But I think anybody watching this would know or listening to this would know that if we're disconnected from ourselves when we're trying to deal with the humanity of others, we just increase the challenge rather than report the work that needs to be done. That's something that we work on a lot with leaders.

Yeah, I recently had a guest on that was talking about if you're not clear on your inner world and your inner negotiators, you're going to have trouble actually then engaging with others and doing that work and negotiating with them. When you need to negotiate, Getting clear within yourself first will have you show up as your best.

Yeah. And we haven't even have experiences within the process because I think there's something that's really subtle within what you just said, which is sometimes our internal voice, or what we perceive as our internal voice is actually like an external echo. Right. It comes from our past. And we listen to certain. Certain messages that we've been telling ourselves throughout our life, as if they're giving us current information in the moment. And, you know, an example of that, and this is. Might be distilled down too simply, but like a lot of people carry a pattern that drives them toward great success of I am not good enough. A belief formed in childhood to say I'm not good enough. And so much of their success has been in an effort to prove that they were absolutely. So then there's great success and then there becomes this, like, fear of letting go of that belief. Because if I let go of this belief, which has driven me, which has been part of my mouth, then where do I exist in this? How do I guarantee the same level of success? We really invite people to discern the difference between an authentic, present voice that's giving us information that's current to the moment and those voices in the background that we sometimes term the dark side. That just continue to push forward old information. And sometimes, yeah, we get great results out of it. But often it comes with the price of being more depleted or not feeling the enrichment and fulfillment of our successes because we're still carrying that baggage of I'm not good enough or I haven't proven it to mom and dad yet.

Right. And when have you proven it right? You've been running your life based on that belief, and it's driven you to create great things. But if you still feel it internally, can understand why it would be hard to let go or there would still be a fear, what if I lose it all? And so that's where I think people find, even with the success that they've always dreamed of, they still may not be happy because they have not dealt with those inner voices that aren't really who they are. And again, do you want. Are you trying to prove something or are you trying to create something?

Right.

And that distinction is really important.

Yeah. And to that moving away from. We look really closely with folks at what we call patterns of rebellion. And we're talking about rebellion specifically from mother and father, but you can see how it carries out in life. And mom and dad might be taken out of the context, but it is a way that some people feel empowered to say, I'm not going to do this thing that used to happen. And that can be powerful when it's from a really authentic place. But sometimes it carries with us this double edge of, well, you know, I'm not going to be like them. So there's like this inherent judgment that also, you know, impacts our internal state. And because it's not. It's not about the learning and curiosity, it becomes rigid. And then so often what we end up doing is exactly what we said we wouldn't do, because we don't.

Don't resolve or reconcile what you're running from actually ends up becoming who you are.

Right. You're just running in a circle. You're running from it and then looping back on the next lap, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Now, what do a skeptic say to you? Or how do you deal with skeptics? I'm sure you might have some that even show up. They want. They want to be there for change, but maybe when they arrive, it's like confronted with, oh, I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to deal with these demons.

Yeah. Well, there's. There's a few things that I think show up primarily. So one is work done in a group can be challenging for People. So there is sometimes skepticism about the group work and people, you know, affiliate doing something in a group that is, has depth and intimacy to it as cult like. Right? We're in no way a cult. The joke that we, that I often say, you know, like one of the primary criterion for a cult is a charismatic, a single charismatic leader. Like, well, one we teach as a team. And then I'm often up there as a leader in that week. I don't know that I could get people to follow me into some of the things that a skeptic would be concerned of. It's just not what we do. So we like to approach skepticism with transparency. The Hoffman Institute and the Hoffman process can seem, for people that are exploring it or trying to gain information about it as fairly secretive, that there's not a lot out there. In some sense that's true. Right. We want people to be able to come and have an experience. So we're not just putting all of our intellectual property out there for everyone to see, but we are happy to discuss it and share and communicate with people and say, hey, this is what we do. We look at these patterns and we look at vision for life. We connect people to what we call the quadrinity, which is the emotional self, the intellect, the body and the spiritual self. We work through, you know, negativity that maybe for some is conscious, for others not about mom and dad and the ways that my upbringing, whatever it may have been, created my patterns, you know, and we want to just be forthright with people because what we want are people that, that are choosing in of their own volition. Right? We're not a place that anyone can assign someone to go to. We don't have, you know, court mandated people coming to our program. We don't allow, you know, executives and HR people to say, you must go to the process. Like people have to be there because they're to do work. Our tagline is when you're serious about change. Right. That requires people to be serious about it when they come into the process. There's often skepticism about the methodology. And we invite that as part of the conversation because there's a fine line between skepticism and curiosity. And so if we can get them out of kind of the pattern skepticism that has judgment attached to it and into curiosity, then we welcome the questions, we welcome the interest, we welcome people to go, oh, okay, hey, sometimes this feels a little too rudimentary for me or it feels too simplified. A primary place that that happens is we're looking at this patterning, this conditioning that we have. And we're tracing most everything back to mother and father. We know that there are other influences in a child's life that contribute to patterns. But we have seven days. We're going to focus on one thing that we know that we do really well and we're going to build from there. And if that tackles 85% of your life's patterns in this exploration, then that's great. If we tried to get to 100% of them, you know, and we're dealing with people's first grade teachers and the church that they went to and you know, all of these things, it, it creates too much, too much information for anybody to process within a week. So that's often where some of the skepticism comes in. It's like a little bit of what about ism? Right. We're talking about mom and dad. They're saying, well, what about this? Yeah, and that's also where the nice low student to teacher ratio comes in. Because then I can sit down with a student and I can talk with them more and I can find out how it really relates to them. So we can use generalizations with the big group, we can narrow in with the individuals. And I think that dynamic really supports people.

Yeah. In that growth. And what happens after the seven days. So you come out of this process, you've got some new insights about old patterns, you've created some vision for where you want to be going. Do you continue to work with people past that or is it usually seven days and you don't see them again?

It's up to them at that point. So we have a lot of offerings in its origin and there might have been a little hubris at the time, but Bob Hoffman, the founder of it, he really, as this kind of came alive in the late 60s 70s, he really felt like, do this work and then go live your life. Set aside all the books that you could be buying. Don't keep going to a bunch of workshops. And I think he was well meaning in that. For anybody that kind of has explored the human potential movement, there was a lot of kind of get your foot in the door with level one and then sign up for level two. And it was kind of, it was a business model that carried forward into multiple levels. Bob's idea as they moved us into retreat was let's put our best foot forward, let's not hold anything back. And then everything after is anselm to that. It's support, there's coaching that we offer, there are additional workshops that we do. We have graduate groups in about 40 US cities where people can just come once a month with other graduates and they can do work with the tools and practices together. I love the coaching component of it. I mean, I appreciate that people can do the process, take a really big step forward in their life and then not be reliant upon us as an organization or me as a teacher or coach. But I certainly welcome it because I think that would be really also unfair to people to say, you've done this in seven days now. Good luck integrating it in your life. So we have some built in follow up that occurs after we do things that support their integration. We do some additional coaching. We bring the group together on Zoom a few times after the process. And then there's all those additional courses which a lot of people really take advantage of. I just find it so rich.

How did you get, how did you get connected to the Hoffman Institute?

So it was just something that at a certain point I thought, okay, I'm trying to figure out what's next again. Right. I graduated, I'd been running this nonprofit. I graduated from college. I was, you know, figuring out what to do. I went as a participant and got so much out of it. And then for me, I mean, the unique part to my story is, as you, you know, mentioned in my introduction, is I was also simultaneously still in the military. I'd moved off of active duty, been in the National Guard, and then I got activated again. So I got called out of the National Guard to serve in Iraq. And it was 18 months in total, six months in Texas and then a year in Iraq. And I had done the process just prior to that. And those tools from the process really helped me in a really difficult and challenging environment. And I think I had learned so much about myself and had learned about bringing compassion into leadership in a way that the military does not teach. Right. Compassion is not a word that probably shows up in any, you know, military manual or any leadership course. It's actually, it's a very compassionate place because you're so bonded with the people you serve with. But what I got from the process really helped me, I think, to be such a better leader and to deal with the chaos and the crises and the trauma that I saw in a way that I never felt anything less than whole, which is not something we can say about all our veterans right now. And so that really just had me go, oh goodness. I didn't know intellectually the depth of work I had done on myself until I was put in your tested. Yeah. And so Then when I came out, they had a call for teachers. Somebody encouraged me to apply, I applied and you know, by good fortune I was accepted. And then here I've been, you know, for almost 14 years now.

That's amazing. And so you're still doing, you're doing programs both now online and in person retreat, is that right? How was that transition for you? Because I know traditionally you've only been in person, but obviously with the pandemic, as many of us who do in person retreats had to move to virtual. How did that work out for you guys?

Better than expected. It was tremendously challenging. One thing that we pride ourselves on is kind of the depth of connection that we can create, the community that we can form in that retreat setting. And so we had to figure how in a virtual environment do we still give people the feeling of connection and group energy? And so I, you know, there's this wonderful, we call them our design team, you know, three teachers that, that focus on design both new programs and refinements to the programs we already have. And we just got in the lab, so to speak, together and looked at what is transferable to this online environment and how do we stay true to what we offer. And we also, and I really appreciate this from our CEO Liza. You know, she said let's not create anything that we, that is just to bridge the gap during this time. If we're going to invest in creating it, we want to create something that's substantial enough that we'd offer it when the world resumes as normal. And so that's what we've done. We created a number of virtual courses. We had been doing stuff virtually in the past, but it was always for graduates, meaning they'd already the seven days and they were usually like an hour and 15 minutes. It was just kind of evening workshops done by Zoom. And now we're doing two and three day virtual retreats that are getting wonderful remarks. And then those people are often signing up for the process, which wasn't, it's not necessarily the aim. We think it's a standalone. The big difference being with the virtuals, they give people a great experience and they're, there's wonderful tools and practices learned from them. What we didn't try and replicate is the depth of healing that occurs in the seven day process, which we really hold as healing work, not just skill building work. And yet so many people are taking those tools from the virtual courses and really creating the healing because I think it becomes inherent when you're looking at these things. You find your way healing that you need. That's been beautiful.

Well, that's wonderful. So I'm so glad you came on today. Can you share with people where they can learn more if they're interested?

Yeah. So the Hoffman Institute, you can find us at our website, www.hoffmaninstitute.org. h O F F M A N so that's the easiest place to go. And look, we are always welcoming people to just simply call in, talk to one of our enrollment counselors. They're not a sal. They just want to inform people on what we offer and that's the easiest way. Yeah.

Okay, great. Well, thanks so much for being on today. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive SA.